Family Games
by Elsha
Summary: A Terry story: featuring the Fairleigh children, Theo, and cricket. Set the summer after Disavowals.


**A/N:** Because I got a review from St. Row-A-Check saying I should write the cricket game mentioned in _Going Home_, and so, I did. It needed writing. Also, my soon-to-be-flatmate is a cricket fiend.

Mostly plotless, with some bonus angst, because summer-after-the-war stories are not ever going to be completely fluffy and happy. Just almost.

* * *

**Family Games  
**

Terry sat on the stairs and listened to the voices coming from the kitchen. It was a sweltering day, even for late August. If she was at school, she'd be down by the lake, or on the dock, waiting for the moment to accidentally-on-purpose fall in. But her last memory of the lake was hiding down by the shore from the Death Eaters, and school was opening two weeks late because the repairs to the castle wards weren't finished yet. Instead, she was sitting at home, pretending to read her Care of Magical Creatures textbook - she couldn't _wait_ to start that class - and half-eavesdropping on the kitchen. Theo had come over, as he had at almost every opportunity this summer. It was mostly because he could, Terry thought, and just a little to reassure himself that Anne was okay.

And to talk to her, and other things, but Terry tried not to think about that, because catching them kissing _once_ had been enough trauma for the year, thank you very much. Practically more traumatic than the battle at Hogwarts. Blood was less gross.

Eddie slunk in the front door from somewhere. Probably he'd been out with his friends. Terry remembered when she knew all of Eddie's friends, even if they were stupid boys who told her she couldn't play football with them because she was a girl. Now she didn't know any of them, except one or two, and sometimes she didn't know Eddie much, either.

"What're you doing?" he asked, looking up at her.

"Reading." She couldn't help a small bounce. "School stuff. I get to do Care of Magical Creatures this year, and it's going to be so much fun, because we actually get to _touch_ them and things and -"

Instead of scowling and changing the topic, like normal, Eddie looked interested. "What, like unicorns?"

"Nah. We don't get to do those till sixth year."

He gave her one of those uncertain looks she got so often from Mum and Dad, who still had trouble really believing in magic. "_Unicorns?_"

"Well, yeah. It's not like dragons or something really interesting. Unicorns're just white horses with magic horns. They don't breathe fire or anything cool."

"You'd like firebreathing dragons to study, wouldn't you?"

Eddie just didn't get things sometimes. "Uh, _yeah_."

He shook his head. "I think I'm glad I'm just a poor Muggle."

"You mean that? Really?" Terry said before she could help herself. Eddie had been so jealous, for so long, that it made her uncomfortable to talk about magic to him, when she thought about it. If she could really talk to him again -

"I mean it." Eddie looked surprised at himself.

Anne stuck her head out of the kitchen. "Hey, Eddie. There's lemonade in the fridge, d'you want a glass?"

"Please."

"Me too!" Terry said hastily, fumbling for the belt that she used to keep her textbook shut. She didn't mind it running around her room, but Mum had complained after it bit her toes, so she had to keep it tied when she wasn't using it.

She slid down the banister, which wasn't as fun as a Hogwarts banister, but there were some things you just had to do.

In the kitchen, Theo was fetching glasses down from the cupboard. He still looked out of place in anything that wasn't robes, but he was making an effort to blend in. It was...sort of working. It would have worked better if he hadn't been on the other side of the room and getting the glasses out by magic.

"Lemonade," Eddie said, eloquently. "Ta."

"You're welcome," Anne said dryly. "We left you some lunch, if you didn't have any. Isn't your school starting on Monday?"

He made a face. "Yeah. The holidays are gone again."

"I'm looking forward to getting back," Anne said, glancing wistfully at Theo. "I thought I never would be, in June, but..."

"Nowhere like Hogwarts," Theo agreed. "But you won't miss it after your NEWTs, believe me."

"Why can't you people have normal qualifications?" Eddie grumbled half-heartedly. "Not named after animals."

"Some Minister for Magic had a bad sense of humour, evidently." Theo shrugged. "They're aptly named, at any rate."

"You're the only person I know who says stuff like aptly," Terry commented, snagging a glass of lemonade of the bench. "Can't you use normal words?"

Theo narrowed his eyes at her, but he must have realised she was joking, because he didn't say anything cutting.

Nicola chose that moment to wander in from the living room; she'd been taking advantage of their parents' absence for the afternoon to watch TV. The dullness of the Saturday afternoon programming must have finally got to her. Terry had been surprised, after her first year at Hogwarts, to find she didn't miss TV all that much. She'd rather be doing stuff.

"I'm _hot_," Nicola whined, making a beeline for the lemonade.

"Well, don't sit around in here watching TV," Anne told her. "Get outside and play, or something."

Terry thought about pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of that statement from someone who was sitting inside, but nobly didn't.

"That's right," Theo chimed in. "Isn't the lawn the natural habitat of little children in summer?"

For someone without any siblings, he'd worked out the best way to deal with Nicola very quickly. It was much the same way he approached Terry - as a smaller, more dangerous version of his peers. Theo was pretty smart.

"I am _not_ little!" Nicola pouted. She hadn't pouted at all the first week after Anne and Terry got back, too awestruck by their safe return, but that hadn't lasted past the first argument over the remote.

"Get over yourself, Nic," Eddie told her loftily. He thought _he_ was the big brother now. Nicola proved this was all in his head by giving him a sound slap on the arm. She'd never do that to Anne.

Anne and Theo proved their lack of maturity by snickering.

"Ow, Nic!" Eddie complained. "You-"

"You deserved that," Terry told him. "Just because you're the oldest one here all the time doesn't mean you get to boss her around. I mean, that'd be like saying you can boss me around, which you can't, definitely, because -"

Eddie glared. It was cheap entertainment, but Terry was a little bored, too. "I hate all of you."

"All of you! You're overheated and grumpy. You should all just get outside. There's a breeze." Anne made shooing motions. "Go on. Out. Argue somewhere else."

Then there'd be nothing to do at _all._ Just Anne and Theo, being mushy, and they did that too much anyway.

"Can't you just do a cooling charm or something, Anne?" Terry suggested hopefully "You almost never do magic at home, even though you can, and you should, because if I could do magic then I'd -"

Anne's lips compressed. This was hardly an old argument. "No."

Terry didn't _get_ it. Anne was seventeen, and old enough to do magic, but all this summer she'd avoided it like the plague. Coming home, she'd dragged her trunk halfway up the stairs before Terry had pointed out she could just use magic, and that trunk was heavy. It was like she was scared.

Theo, for once, took Terry's side. "Why on earth not? It's hardly as if the Muggles will notice, and you are a witch-"

Anne bit her lip, a sure sign of distress. "Yes, but - Theo, it's not like that. Being able to do things doesn't mean you should. Terry's nagging me all the time to do magic, now-" - Terry rolled her eyes - "because I can, but...there are plenty of normal ways to do those things without magic. Like breezes."

Terry pulled out a chair from the table. This could take a while. Anne and Theo really needed to learn to avoid talking about stuff. Or do it in a less deep and philosophical manner. Or something.

"Magic _is _normal," Theo countered. "It - why do you say it's not? It's all around you at Hogwarts, you'll spend the rest of your adult life in the wizarding world, it's just...it is everyday."

"Even wizards don't do everything with magic."

"They do most of it," Terry pointed out. "When I go to Cait's, or something-"

"Terry's right. This is something wizards _do_ do with magic. Or Dad did, when - when he was still home. And my relatives, when I visited them in summer. So go on, then. Or I-"

"You don't get it. Theo, I don't want to - I don't want Eddie and Nic to think I'm better than them, or, or different, just because of this, and not doing magic, it does keep things normal, or their normal, and while I'm at home I have to do what's their normal, not mine."

"So it is yours."

"Maybe, or maybe it will be. Maybe it will never be, quite. I think part of me is always going to be impressed by magic."

Terry gave up and headed for the door. The others had left about five minutes ago. Behind her, Anne cottoned on to this. "Wait - where have the others gone?"

Nicola appeared in the doorway, carrying a cricket bat."Are you two coming outside, or not? Eddie's putting up the cricket set! I get to wear his helmet!"

Terry bounced. _Something to _do! "Great idea, Nic! Are you wicket-keeping, then? Where's the cricket ball? I remember it rolled under the couch last week, did anyone get it out? We could always use a tennis ball, I s'pose, but they're too bouncy-"

"_Cricket_?"

Oh, this was going to be fun. They could teach Theo to play. Teaching Theo about Muggle things was _always_ fun. He knew everything at Hogwarts, or he acted like it, but here he didn't have a clue.

"Oh come on Theo," she said, turning, "it'll be fun, we can teach you lots. Eddie's getting really good now, well, not really really good, but he's not a bad bowler. It's just fun. And then we get to go and find the ball when someone accidentally hits it into the neighbours' garden. When we were li- when the Martins still lived two doors down, we used to do that all the time, because then we could get Hector and 'Lise to come and play too. Please play."

Eddie appeared behind Nicola, swinging one of the stumps."Terry, what - oh, they're still in the kitchen. Anne, you're so busy telling us to get outside, you don't have any excuses. It's been ages since you had a bat."

Anne looked thoughtful. "It has, hasn't it? All right then. Theo, you'll like it, promise."

Theo looked uneasy. "I'm useless at Quidditch."

_"Completely_ different." Anne was giving him her best sincere gaze. Terry tried not to smile. "Cross my heart.

"You mean to say you've never played cricket, Theo?" Eddie, for once, didn't sound condescending, just curious. "Don't wizards play?"

"Hagrid lets us play on the Quidditch pitch in the first term before games start," Terry added, remembering her first few weeks at Hogwarts, before murder attempts and Death Eaters. When sunny days had meant nothing could be bad, ever, anywhere. "We haven't been able to transfigure proper bats yet. Jake - Jake used to be really good. I've been teaching Alex and Cait."

"However, apart from Terry's independent Muggles Studies class, we don't," Theo said sardonically. "Is this a problem?"

"That settles it. You're English, you've got a patriotic duty to learn." Eddie grinned cheerfully.

"I do?" Theo eyed him with the wary look he usually reserved for Terry, which was completely unfair, because she was never this manic about anything. Really.

"You do," said Eddie in firm tones. "Come on."

Anne gave him a light push. "Outside with you, Nott. Be a man. Face up to my brother's fearsome bowling."

"I don't like the sound of this..."Theo managed to get out before Anne had him out of the kitchen. Terry herded him in on the other side, just in case he tried to make a run for it.

"Too bad," said Anne.

* * *

They didn't have a very big lawn, but it was big enough for a shortened wicket and a couple of fielders, as long as the fielders didn't mind running backwards into fences and bushes and occasionally the rose bed. Fielding was usually reserved for the younger and more breakable members of the family, on the grounds that they weren't in charge. Terry fielded a lot. She didn't mind today, though, if she got to see Theo try to bat. 

"I'm wicketkeeping!" Nic announced, staking her claim to a safe patch of lawn. "Eddie, where's your helmet?"

"In my room, on the - fine."Nic was gone before he could finish. Terry giggled; she'd want his precious helmet, too, if he was going to be throwing cricket balls at her.

"I'll field," Anne volunteered. "Theo, d'you want to try batting?"

"Does that mean someone's going to throw things at me?" He eyed the ball that Eddie was tossing. "Do _I_ get a helmet?"

"Nah, you'd heal anyway," Terry informed him. "And Eddie isn't good enough to kill anyone yet. Or seriously injure them. I think. Are you, Eddie?"

"No." He looked disgruntled. "I'm a lot faster than I was when you were here last, though."

"I could bowl if you'd feel better, Theo," Terry offered, trying to sound innocent. Theo, naturally, looked down his nose at this challenge to his bravery, and picked up the bat from where Nic had dropped it on the lawn. "I'll be fine."

"You will _not_." Eddie burst out simultaneously, "I'm b-"

"She's winding you up, Eddie," Anne said patiently.

"You're so easy," Terry couldn't help saying, and ducked Eddie's swat, laughing. "I'll field, I'll field, oh fine bowler."

"So what do I do with this?" Theo was asking Anne, just as Nic trotted out of the house, looking pretty silly in Eddie's helmet. "I remember I stand in front of those sticks, but-"

Anne's lips twitched. "Stumps. They're stumps, and yes, you stand in front of them. Eddie throws the ball at you, and you hit it."

"And then..."

"You run to the camellia and back. You have to get back to the stumps before Terry or Eddie or I throw the ball at them. You get a point for every time you run there and back, they're called runs."

"And I catch the ball if you miss it," Nic chimed in, voice muffled. "And if you hit it and I catch it anyway, you stop batting and someone else has a go."

"Or if I throw the ball past you and hit the stumps, or if you hit it and Anne or Terry catches it before it hits the ground," Eddie added. "It's pretty simple really. No, you hold it with _two_ hands."

Because Eddie didn't know how to not take sport seriously, they had to wait to start until he'd shown Theo how to hold the bat properly, punctuated by Anne noting that he'd never shown _her_ that, and Eddie saying that she was a girl and not interested, and Terry and Nic volunteering that they were girls and they were interested, and Theo asking if this was a game or an argument, and all four of them telling him "Both."

"I see," he said dryly. "Can I hit the ball now?"

As it turned out, the answer was no, because Eddie really had improved over the last year and Theo, while being smart and quick and able to save Terry's life from swamps and Death Eaters and things, couldn't swing a cricket bat to save his own. His wild swing nearly resulted in Nic being clobbered on the ear. Terry wasn't sure how that worked, since Nic was _behind_ him. The ball whistled pass and knocked one of the stumps right over.

"That was...impressive," Anne commented, in that dry way she'd picked up from Theo. "Maybe you could try again?"

Theo shot her a look of imminent death. Terry felt somehow proud of her older sister.

"Isn't it Nicola's turn now?" Theo said on cue. Unfortunately, for him, anyway, Nic knew comedy when she saw it, and shook her head. "No. It's one of the rules. If you get out on the first ball you have to try again 'till you hit it."

"Really?"

Eddie snorted. "It's one of the special family rules. Not really."

"Ah." Theo grinned. "Like the special Quidditch rule I had with my cousins about the older team having to start a hundred points behind."

"Or the one hand, one bounce rule," Anne added.

Terry wrinkled her nose. "Oh, yeah. Dad still swears he never told us that, and he did, because I remember it, he was watching cricket on TV and-"

"The what rule?" Eddie said.

"The one bounce rule," Anne explained. "That the batsman's still out if you catch the ball with one hand if it's bounced once. Dad told me that when I was really small, and I kept watching test matches for years waiting to see it happen. It never did. He denies ever saying it, of course."

"So does that make him mean, or you gullible?" Theo asked.

She shrugged. "Probably both."

Eddie broke up the conversation by getting ready to bowl again. The second and third attempts were only marginally more successful. Theo managed a run off the second, which rolled across the ground and stopped by Anne's feet. Terry was pretty sure she waited to throw it at the stumps, which was sort of cheating, but not really, since it wasn't like they had teams. The third ball Theo managed to catch with the edge of the bat before it landed safely in Nic's hands.

"This is getting kinda silly," she said dubiously. "Can I have a go now?"

"Certainly," Theo said hastily. He hated looking bad at things. But Eddie intervened, this time.

"One more, you're getting the hang of it."

"O-_kay_," Nic sulked. "But _then_ it's my turn."

Theo actually managed something that looked like a proper cricket stance, this time. Terry was really impressed. He was trying much harder than he normally did at Muggle things. Maybe Anne had had a talk to him. When he swung at the ball, it connected with a sharp _crack_ and flew high in the air. Terry ran backwards, trying to track it, but it disappeared out of her vision just as her back hit the wall of the house. The dreadful sound of shattering glass from directly above her caused her to throw her arms up over her face.

When she didn't feel any pain or blood, she lowered them cautiously. Nic had taken off her helmet to gape up at the first storey of the house. Theo looked startled; Anne, horrified; Eddie, guiltily amused.

They did look funny. Terry laughed. "You guys are going to catch flies, soon!"

"Definitely would have been a six," Eddie reassured Theo, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Six?"

"Past the boundary."

"Somehow, I'm not reassured."

"Mum and Dad are going to be _so_ mad," Nic declared, in the voice that meant "but not at me, so it'll be fun to watch."

Anne just nodded. "Oh _dear_. I suppose we should go and clean the glass up, or - or something -"

Terry finally stepped away from the house and turned to see a whole pane of her parents' bedroom window vanished, apart from a few shards glinting in the sun. It had a sort of horrific beauty. It reminded her of the windows of the Great Hall, stained glass lying in silver and sapphire and emerald heaps on the floor , and some of the pile glinting ruby where someone had been thrown through and caught on the -

"Come on, let's go look!" said Nic, grabbing her hand and pulling her inside, and the spell was broken. Terry gulped, following her up the stairs and reminding herself firmly that it was sunny and summer and no one had been thrown through this window, just a cricket ball, just an accident, just a game.

Behind her she could hear Eddie telling Theo what he'd done right in managing to hit the ball, and Anne indulging in verbal hand-wringing. Terry didn't see what the big problem was. There were _heaps_ of spells that could fix a broken window, and she bet Theo knew all of them. Or lots of them. It wasn't like Mum and Dad would ever know.

But Anne wouldn't think of that, because she never thought of magic until you reminded her about it. It was weird, thinking of Anne that way, because at school it seemed like Anne always knew what to do. Anne was different at home than she was at school. Terry wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because Anne liked to fit in, and not be noticed. Sometimes she liked it too much.

Maybe that was why Theo, who still retained his disdain for the Muggle world, was bothering to learn about it. Because he liked to fit in, too, and now he had to.

They were both just weird.

* * *

The cricket ball was lying innocently on their parents' bed. The floor below the window was strewn with pieces of glass, glinting in the sun like diamonds. Terry caught Nic by the shoulder before she could rush in. 

"Hold on, you're not wearing shoes-"

"Oh _dear_," Anne said again. "I'll go get a dustpan. We'll need some newspaper to wrap it up in. I-"

"_Reparo_," said Theo, pulling his wand from his pocket, and the glittering shards rose up and assembled themselves back in the window, blending seamlessly together.

"Wow," breathed Nic, still now not from caution but wonder. "That was _cool_."

"I didn't think of that," Anne said slowly. "I wouldn't have thought of that."

"So there are some uses for magic at home?" Theo prodded her.

"I suppose there are," she allowed.

"Now that, I wish I could do," Eddie said. Not bitterly, just wryly. He pushed past Terry to pick the ball up off the bed. "I've broken more than one window."

He crossed the room, touching the now whole pane lightly, as if it might shatter again. "It's like it was never broken."

"Magic can't fix everything," Anne pointed out. "Just windows. And cups. And that sort of thing. And you can't fix them if you lose the pieces. Mai dropped a mug in our dorm one evening, and one of the shards spun off somewhere and it ended up having a piece out of the top when she mended it."

"So next time I drop a plate when I'm putting them away, will you fix it?" said Nic, with an eye to the main chance.

"Maybe."

"If you're not dropping them on purpose just to see magic," Theo cautioned. "I went through a phase of doing that, when I was about three."

"You, impressed by magic?" Anne said lightly.

He gave a half-shrug. "I _was_ three."

"I like seeing magic, sometimes," Nic said. "You can do it now, and you don't. You should do it more, Anne."

"You'd like that?"

"Not all the time," Eddie said hastily. "Some things you've got to do the old-fashioned way."

"Magic _is_ the old-fashioned way," Terry said, "it's in Latin. That's old-fashioned. Anyway, look at Theo. He's really old-fashioned, even though he's Anne's age."

Eddie, naturally, wasn't listening; he was transfixed by something outside the window.

"You're not listening," Terry said in a voice that promised imminent bodily harm if he didn't start. It usually worked.

"Mum and Dad are home!" he said in strangled tones. "Out, come on, go!"

As one, they piled from the bedroom and down the stairs, nearly falling over each other.

"Garden!" instructed Anne when they hit the ground floor, and they swung around the corner and headed for the back door and the lawn. Eddie, bringing up the rear and clutching the cricket ball, had only just made it out when Mum appeared from around the side of the house.

"Hello, Theo. Are my children torturing you again?" she said, sizing up the situation at a glance. Theo had picked up the bat, and Nic was holding Eddie's helmet. "Whatever Eddie's telling you, I promise that learning to play cricket isn't an essential skill in the Muggle world."

"I didn't think it was, Mrs, Fairleigh," Theo said. "But it did sound interesting. And it's just about as bizarre as Quidditch."

"It is _not_," Eddie said heatedly, "you've got three different types of players and- "

"By the way," Mum added, "I noticed you haven't been _entirely_ angelic while we were out. The lemonade's still on the bench."

Terry tried to not look like she was relaxing from a position of frozen panic. She thought she did a much better job than Nic and Eddie. Anne and Theo, accomplished dissemblers, didn't even blink. Mum and Dad would have _fits_ if they knew how good Anne had got at lying since Theo.

Anne made a face. "Sorry, Mum, we came out to play cricket and completely forgot. I'll go put it away."

"I've done that already. As long as that's the worst you're doing, I'm hardly worried."

"Us, Mum?" said Eddie bravely. "How much trouble d'you think we can have got into playing cricket? Look, we haven't even squashed the roses."


End file.
